Main Street Ventures has announced its latest round of grants, and 15 Greater Cincinnati businesses – including a small-batch coffee roaster, a Northern Kentucky-based comedy club and a local video marketing company – have landed equity-free funding from the Over-the-Rhine nonprofit to help grow their businesses.
In total, Main Street Ventures awarded $264,524 during its fourth-quarter grant cycle. The funding comes in two allotments:
- Launch funding, which provides emerging, pre-revenue businesses at the prototype or product stage with $5,000-$10,000 to increase the odds of reaching the market entry stage and beyond
- And Leap funding, which provides revenue-generating businesses with $10,000-$30,000 to scale their community impact and increase the odds of survival.
Sean Parker, executive director at Main Street Ventures, said the organization had a “staggering” number of businesses – 400 overall – apply for funding this year, “a testament to the thriving startup ecosystem and the vast need for support in the region."
For 2023, the group awarded more than $1.1 million in grants to 64 companies.
“We continue to be impressed with the quality of early-stage businesses in our community that apply for funding,” Parker said in a news release. “As we approach our 25th anniversary next year, we’re excited to continue empowering entrepreneurs to transform their innovative ideas into thriving businesses.”
Five companies received fourth quarter Launch funding, including:
- 6 ‘N The Mornin’, a southern-style breakfast/brunch restaurant. 6 ‘N The Mornin’ opened in July in the Shoppes of Kenwood on Montgomery Road
- Brewed & Frothy Coffee, a small-batch coffee roaster and mobile coffee cart providing coffee catering at private events like weddings, bridal parties, business meetings, anniversary dinners, brunches, birthday parties and more. Brewed & Frothy Coffee in 2022 was awarded a food grant from Northern Kentucky’s Incubator Kitchen Collective and Kroger
- Inland Shrimp Co., which has developed proprietary technology that allows food-conscious consumers to enjoy fresh, locally-raised seafood species utilizing vertical farming methods, remote sensing and automation and alternative energy from repurposed inner-city buildings that employ local residents and drastically reduce the seafood carbon footprint
- Outmore Gear, which designs, makes and sells outdoor recreation equipment
- Qualzai, an AI-powered tool and one-stop shop for qualitative research.
The 10 companies receiving fourth quarter Leap funding include:
- Beards & Bellies, a barbecue concept focused on locally sourced, quality ingredients with a Louisiana twist
- BenSuite, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform streamlining the employee benefits industry, fostering collaboration between insurance brokers and carriers through a centralized portal
- Commonwealth Sanctuary, Northern Kentucky’s only comedy club, dedicated listening room and a premier community events venue
- Jet Black Vintage, a sustainable Black-owned business focused on training young fashion designers and providing one-of-one garments from repurposed materials. Jet Black Vintage in November acquired Rad OTR, adding the Main Street clothing shop to its umbrella of storefronts
- Live N Learn, which creates international education opportunities for students and families to travel, host and make connections with peers from around the world
- The Delish Dish, a Covington-based full-service catering and events company that specializes in from-scratch food for events from 10-500 guests. Delish Dish ranked as the region’s 38th-largest Cincinnati area women-owned businesses with $1.1 million in 2022 revenue
- Micromerch, a full-service solution that creates, photographs and distributes sustainable branded merchandise for teams
- Modica, which produces cocktail and mocktail mixers made with superfoods, functional ingredients, and up to 70% less sugar than other mixers
- OBA-AI, which streamlines insurance claims by instantly assessing auto damage by leveraging AI and a computer vision model
- Spotted Yeti Media, a video marketing and production company. Molly Berrens, president of Spotted Yeti Media, was a 2022 Business Courier Forty Under 40 honoree.
The grants were made possible in part due to funding support from Ohio Third Frontier, the Hubert Family Foundation, the McDonald Family Foundation, the P&G Fund, the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trust, the Northern Kentucky Entrepreneurship Fund in collaboration with Blue North and Horizon Community Funds, and Cincinnati city council American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA funds), which concluded with this grant cycle.
The ARPA funding allowed Main Street Ventures to distribute about $900,000 in grants to 44 women-owned businesses, helping create 178 jobs and $70,914 of generated revenue.
Since 2018, Main Street Ventures has distributed equity-free funding to 164 recipients, totaling nearly $3.5 million. In addition to grant funding, recipients receive programming support in the form of workshops, advising and access to business development resources.
